Whatever one may think
of our President, it has to be admitted that his speech to the
United Nations showed real leadership. He took the time to explain,
at length, that although the noxious Innocence of Muslimsvideo had nothing to do with the US government, and that it
represents only the views of marginal extremists, we defend their
right to engage in such speech because of the nature of our system.
He explained why we don’t ban such speech — because, you
see, there’s this thing called the Constitution — and,
more importantly, why it’s not in America’s interest to
have the world believe we endorse the hate that emanates from such
efforts.

I’m ignoring, of
course, the threats directed at Iran and Syria: that, after all, is
routine for this administration. I’m ignoring the irony of his
remarks about the evils of “extremism” against the
backdrop of US support to Sunni extremists in Syria, who are killing
civilians, driving out Christians and others, and engaging in what
can only be called terrorism under the rubric of a US-supported
movement for “democracy.” Every time an American
president opens his mouth to talk about “democracy,”
“freedom,” and All Those Good Things, the charge of
hypocrisy hangs over him like a storm cloud, and I won’t be
the one to defend him.

However, I will defend
him when he’s right against those who attack him for
“appeasement” — such as Matt Welch, editor of Reason magazine and former “war-blogger.” As
editor of a magazine considered by many the voice of libertarianism — a movement I consider myself a part of — Welch’s
views on this matter are apt to be confused with the movement at
large. In this case, that would be a very dangerous and undesirable
assumption.

So what’s
Welch’s beef with the President? He finds it “noxious”
that Obama described the Innocence video as
“disgusting.” He finds it equally noxious that the
President went on to say “its message must be rejected.”
Yet how could anyone outside of Pam Geller, Robert Spencer, and the
rest of the hate-mongers amongst us object to that?

“So many
things wrong in so few words. Why this video, and not Theo Van
Gogh’s Submission, or Lars Vilks’ animation of Mohammed wanting to
go to a gay bar, the ‘Super Best Friends’ episode of South
Park, or Funny or Die‘s ‘How to Pick a Pocket’? Is it the
degree of the insult, the craptasticness of the production values,
the size of the release, or the vociferousness of the outrage
expressed?”

Welch is playing dumb
here by dropping the context: did an American ambassador die due to
Theo Van Gogh’s obsession with Muslims? Or the inanities of
South Park? Welch writes: “It is not any politician’s job, and
certainly not any American politician’s job, to instruct the entire
world on which films to criticize.” This is Welch’s idea
of advocating “less government,” and yet this impulse in
him is strangely selective: we heard not one word of criticism from
the editors of Reason (or Welch) when the US government
denounced
the “Holocaust Denial Film Festival” put on in Tehran,
which the White House attacked
as “an affront to the entire civilized world.” In short,
the US government engages in this sort of thing all the time —
and yet why were no objections raised by Welch and his crew until
the subject was obscene anti-Muslim bigotry?

Welch writes:

“And speaking
of that favorite State Department word, rejected — isn’t that a
word to describe what you do to something that gets in your face, or
body? In medicine, the body ‘rejects” organs or other
dissonant substances that have been introduced within it. In
basketball, not every blocked shot is a ‘rejection,’
mostly those that come when the offensive player is driving
aggressively toward the vicinity of the hoop.”

Ignore the incoherent
style — how is a hate video like a basketball game? —
and get to the essential issue: does Welch reject the “message”
of Innocence? It’s not clear. He writes:

“Innocence of
Muslims didn’t get all up in someone’s grill. it lay forlorn and
neglected on YouTube until some people (pro and con) decided to get
excited by it. Even then, it is a remarkably easy piece of culture
to avoid coming into contact with. ‘Rejected’ implies a
cultural potency that ‘Sam Becile’ (or as I prefer,
‘C’est imbecile’) could never dream of.”

As I’ve pointed
out in this space repeatedly, Innocence didn’t
just lay forlorn and neglected on YouTube: the makers actively
promoted it to Muslims in hopes of “flushing out”
alleged Islamist cells in the US. They also promoted it abroad, in
Egypt, where news of it first surfaced. It was, in short, a
deliberate provocation, a work of “art” designed
to inspire a violent reaction — a job at which it succeeded
all too well.

The President of the
United States no doubt has better intelligence on the origins of the Innocence video than I do, but for him to pay so much
attention to it in this high profile speech indicates — at
least to me — that his information comports roughly with my guess:
that it was and is a deliberate ploy to direct violence at American
interests throughout the world, including embassies and US
government personnel.

In this context, then,
it is indeed the President’s job “to instruct the world
on which films to criticize.” His job, after all, is to
“protect and defend” not only the Constitution but also
the people of the United States, a people whose lives are put in
danger when someone creates provocations of this sort. After all,
has Welch forgotten about the death of Chris Stevens and three
others? An American ambassador hasn’t been killed in a
generation, and for Welch to snipe at the President in the one
moment in which he rises to the occasion and acts presidential is
downright weird.

It gets weirder. In
response to the President’s statement that “the future
must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,”
Welch avers:

“Not your
call, dude. Also, not my ‘prophet.’”

Now this is an odd way
to configure the President’s phraseology. Aside from the
juvenility of “dude,” the “not my prophet”
remark is telling, because what it seems to be telling us is that Welch
is
dog-whistling to the Obama-is-a-secret-Muslim crowd. Now this may seem a
stretch, in ordinary circumstances: after all, the implication is
indirect. Yet when one considers that Reason is financially
supported through the very generous contributions of Charles and David
Koch, who are on a jihad against the President this election year, this
kind of low-level pandering is not out of the question. At this point nothing would surprise me.

Not my prophet,
dude — but maybe yours! *Wink wink!*

“Yet to be
credible,” said the President, “those who condemn that
slander must also condemn the hate we see when the image of Jesus
Christ is desecrated, churches are destroyed, or the Holocaust is
denied.” Welch’s response:

“Even though
you can see what the president’s getting at in terms of equivalent
outrage, he’s still way off base here. It is not our job to condemn
blasphemy of any kind, period. As individuals we might criticize a
few bits here and there, but we mostly ignore the vast ocean of what
various people may consider ‘hateful’ or ‘offensive’
speech, and rightly so.”

It is not our job to
condemn blasphemy — yet to read Reason magazine,
especially the online version, one would think it is our job as
libertarians to promote it. Welch and his fellow editors have been
promoting the makers of the hate-video as veritable free speech
martyrs, heroes to be defended. Except for calling “Sam
Bacile” an “imbecile” (in French), we haven’t
heard one word of condemnation out of their mouths when it comes to
the actual content of the film. Why is that?

Libertarians of the
Reasonoid persuasion are radical anti-clericalists: they are in
favor of blasphemy, and in Welch’s case there may be
reason to believe blasphemy directed against the Muslim faith is
particularly welcomed. His “war-blogger” history
is replete with examples of utter contempt for Islam, per se. More ominously, his
very first
entry on Mattwelch.com declares:

“Welcome
to War. Sounds like a strange and unpleasant thing to
say, but these are strange and unpleasant times, requiring unusual
responses. Like many of you, I am reading and hearing and watching
too much about the wicked horror of Sept. 11, and finding it a
challenge to keep track of how it is already changing our lives. The
biggest question facing Americans and other decent people is how the
civilized world and its strongest country should respond to this
mass murder. I, for one, advocate a Global War to abolish terrorism.
Many of you probably disagree.”

Well, yes —
especially if you’re a libertarian who opposes endless wars
and the depredations against liberty that go with them.

Back then, when the
war hysteria was at its height, it was hard for sites like
Antiwar.com to even operate: we were subjected not only to constant
DDoS attacks, but also received death threats by the thousands. To
say that Welch was a part of this mass hysteria is to understate the
case: in fact his literary career really took off because of that
hysteria, and he knowingly rode its momentum to where he is today —
editing an ostensibly libertarian magazine, and pontificating on Fox
News, where he gets to slyly imply the President of the United
States is a secret Muslim — if indeed that is what he meant to say. Of course, what dog-whistling involves, in this case, is playing to it without really saying it.

While we here at
Antiwar.com were on the receiving end of death threats, Welch was
busy excoriating the anti-war movement: another
early entry in his old “war blog”
likens opponents of the post-9/11 war hysteria to modern replicas of
Neville Chamberlain. Critics of Bush’s open-ended
“international war on terrorism,” such as Michael Moore,
were smeared by Welch as “anti-American” and disdained
as spineless “pacifists.”

Given this history,
Welch’s recent fulminations against the President’s
“appeasement” of rioting Muslims are an indication that
this particular leopard hasn’t changed his spots. Up until
now, he’s managed to rein in his inner “war blogger,”
but the recent crisis provoked by Innocence has forced
him out of the closet, so to speak, and it isn’t a pretty
sight.

I, accuse President Obama of appeasement – appeasement of racist, land-stealing Zionism. And, even worse than appeasement – occasional complicity. Yesterday, President Obama could have told the UN that America condemns terrorism in the name of Islam but also the major cause of Islamic terrorism, namely Zionism which is denying the Palestinians their own country. But, he chose to tell only half of the truth.
This is a clear cut issue that America must address or it will wind up on the terribly wrong side of History.

Yonatan

The Constitution? That's a joke! that piece of paper was shredded a while back. The only thing remaining in the Bill of Rights for the 99% is the Right to Be Billed.

hobo

The fact that Reason magazine is supposed to be libertarian is news to me. It always aligned with pro-government bootlickers. (Look at their stance on USAID.) Combine that with an advocacy for mercantilist economic policies, you have people masquerading as libertarians.

Sam Lowry

On the path to libertarianism, there are many distractions:

Ayn Rand. She wrote some page turners and rightly celebrated the entrepreneur. Why she's a distraction from libertarianism: the big business people aren't necessarily always the good guys. To the contrary, they're the ones that can typically afford to buy the favor of the politicians. More fundamentally, the notion of "rational self-interest" kinda loses its logical traction in the face of the fact that there is nothing categorically immoral or un-libertarian about genuine altruism.

The Cato Institute: They've cranked out some good papers on the consequences of government regulation. Yet they always suspiciously seem to lose their nerve when the subject is war or the Federal Reserve.

Milton Friedman: For as much genuinely educational pro-free-market rhetoric as he has cranked out, he has done much harm to the cause of liberty. He proposed income-tax-withholding as a temporary (ha ha) measure to help fund WWII. Because his understanding of the nature of money was inherently fallacious, his macro-economics made allowances for a central monetary authority. That's why Chicago School economics are (or were) allowed in establishment political discourse while Austrian School economics isn't.

And then there's the Reason Foundation, which Justin properly deals with here…

"The thing is that I am getting more and more convinced that the war-peace question is the key to the whole libertarian business […]" — Murray Rothbard, in a letter to a colleague, May 19, 1959

Bob D

I basicly agree with you on Ayn Rand. But after all, there were evil businessmen in Atlas Shrugged. What about Dagny's brother and Orren Boyle? I'd say the virtuous businessmen were in a minority in the Atlas Shrugged world. They were just the focus. But certainly Ayn's actual views towards war and towards the rights of the Palestinians and all oppressed peoples (to her, savages) cannot be overlooked. Don't see it directly addressed in her books though.

guest

"Occupy Wall Street (OWS) was initiated by the Canadian activist group Adbusters,[11][12][13] and partly inspired by the Arab Spring,[14][15] especially Cairo's Tahrir Square protests, and the Spanish Indignants.[16][17][18] The movement commonly uses the slogan We are the 99%, the #Occupy hashtag format, and organizes through websites such as Occupy Together."

Canadian's causing protests in the US. Inciting US citizens to protest against US institutions.

While I don't advocate for war, I don''t advocate for the other side either, Micheal Moore can stuff it.
Both sides are violence.

Bob D

Maybe both sides are violence. But the US kills thousands from a distance as the "other side" kills 4 here and 10 there eyeball to eyeball. The impersonal murdering done by the US cannot compare to protests against institutions that further the wars that you claim you don't advocate as you single out Michael Moore and are silent about George W. , Dick Cheney and Mr Rumsfeld.

guest

Last I checked we're killing the Afghan governments enemies and building them an army and police force. We also fought with the kurds and others in Iraq, we also arm the rebels (asked) in fighting in Syria, we also armed and aided(asked) the rebels in Lybia, Mali is at the UN asking for assistance against Islamists. How many people from those countries lobby the US to go aid them? Michael Moore thinks the rest of the world is innocent and only the US does it all, all by themselves. How many on the left supported the "democracy" uprisings to overthrow the dictators only to install another one?
like I said both sides advocate for war, left and right.

guest

"'Code Pink' rethinks its call for Afghanistan pullout

In Afghanistan, the US women's activist group finds that their Afghan counterparts want US troop presence – as well as more reconstruction.

but before everything gets lost my original point was…from the article

"They also promoted it abroad, in Egypt, where news of it first surfaced. It was, in short, a deliberate provocation, a work of “art” designed to inspire a violent reaction — a job at which it succeeded all too well."

How many protesters at occupy were pepper sprayed, arrested, hurt, how much money from taxpayers was needed for police etc…

Even with that I wouldn't ban free speech.

guest

"The NSA warrantless surveillance controversy (AKA "Warrantless Wiretapping") concerns surveillance of persons within the United States during the collection of foreign intelligence by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the war on terror. Under this program, referred to by the Bush administration as the "terrorist surveillance program",[1] part of the broader President's Surveillance Program, the NSA was authorized by executive order to monitor, without search warrants, the phone calls, Internet activity (Web, e-mail, etc.), text messaging, and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lies within the U.S. Critics, however, claimed that it was in an effort to attempt to silence critics of the Bush Administration and their handling of several hot button issues during its tenure."

No phone call to a foreign nation goes unnoticed! FISA

Rusty

Slightly off topic, only slightly off topic, here is a video of a press conference of The Washington Institute essentially advocating a 'Gulf of Tonkin' type event to get the US into a war with Iran. As examples he runs off a litany of historical precedents such as the firing on Ft. Sumter, the sinking of the Maine, the sinking of the Lusitania, Pearl Harbor, and the Gulf of Tonkin event.

Kevin W. Cornell

Justin, I agree with your analysis here except the part which insinuates that Matt Welch may be “dogwhistling” that Obama is a secret Muslim. It’s usually the hyper-PC “progressive” left that always plays that annoying I-can-read-your-mind dogwhistling crap and it gets old real fast (to me anyways). … On a very tangential note, I've read at least an essay or two of yours in which you've denigrated "white supremacists" like Jared Taylor—someone whom I’m a huge fan of, meaning that from what I’ve read of yours it’s clear to me that we differ culturally in at least some significant ways, even though I very much appreciate the non-interventionism you espouse. Because of this, I suggest (humbly) that you make a point to always differentiate your (anti-racist?) cultural views from your anti-interventionism so that the former doesn’t turn us “neo-Nazis” off to the latter. I’m not suggesting that you retract or alter your cultural views—as I don’t intend to patronize you in any way—just that you draw a line between your cultural views and libertarian foreign policy generally in order to coalition build with regard to the anti-interventionism.

Deuce

I agree. This site is becoming too "Justins personal agenda" and losing its anti-interventionist appeal.

Did I really just read him bashing a nobody blogger just to defend Barry Blowback Obama's self-proclaimed commitment to peace, domestic security and Constitutional freedoms? Americans are 8 times more likely to be killed by a local police officer than a terrorist? With his NDAA that ratio will surely rise. But according to Justin, Obama is just doing his job of protecting and defending the Constitution (oh the humanity). And for that reason we should accept 1) the legitimacy of all religions, then 2) make a point to not say anything bad about them. And all because a freedom-stomping, war mongering fraud suddenly claims to be committed to peace and civil rights.

This is the most ludicrous thing I've ever read on this site. Will the real Justin Raimondo please stand up?

Freedom to express an opinion under article one ?? Cool ..The gloves are off where the Israel Lobby, AIPAC and any other Zionist FREAK is concerned !!

Oswaldwasalefty

On the latest Counterspin I think Vijay Prashad gives some much needed context to the culture issue in the non-Euro-American sectors of the Empire, like the Muslim World:http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4620

His point being that given the West's economic, military and political dominance of the globe, people in the non-Euro-American parts of the world feel like they're getting it rubbed in their faces when people in the West mock their culture. It's bad enough that they as so totally dominated by the West and all of the suffering it entails when being dominated by the West. But the West doesn't stop there and must insist on ridiculing the culture identities that gives these peoples a sense of pride and purpose in the world they live in .

And this doesn't mean religion either. Here I am reminded of the attempt by the French to impose a Romanized alphabet onto the Cambodian people during World War II. The Cambodians resisted it calling it an attack on their culture and their very identity as Cambodians. It never took hold. The French governor of Cambodia at the time compared the Cambodian language to a "badly tailored suit". It is very possible that many a Cambodian at the time had the same feeling about the French language. The reality is that the Latin alphabet is a badly tailored suit when it comes to the phonologically complex Cambodian language.

Anyway, this Western mocking of the cultures of the nations it has conquered has been going on since the rise of European hegemony. It has a particular intensity with the Arab and greater Muslim worlds now because Washington is at war with much of that part of the world.

Justin points out “that it was and is a deliberate ploy to direct violence at American interests throughout the world, including embassies and US government personnel” and I've even been wondering whether the Arabic translation of 'Innocence' might be an Iranian response to the Stuxnet virus?
Were this to be the case then would it mean that the Koch brothers and the Ayatollahs have become inadvertent comrades in arms in the Great Cyber War?
An eloquent response to the type of logic espoused by Welch has come from Ramzy Baroud and it's well worth reading: http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/09/on-anti-muslim-…

Spartacus

Yes, what Obama said was true, but what are his motives? Evil will use the truth to its own ends. Whenever I find myself wanting to agree with the right-sounding argument of someone I know to be untrustworthy or evil, I have to look at the motives. Judging by the past 3.5 years of his presidency, I can only say that Obama's motives are inimical to the Constitution and individual liberty. Therefore, I could never defend or justify any of his arguments, no matter how sofisticated or right-sounding.

Pistoff

Does anyone else notice this site slowly slipping into mainstream thought, and lending unwarranted credibility to the dog and pony show of 'foreign relations'?

All this article does is shoot a messenger, while avoiding the message. And in order to do so it makes a martyr of a government meddler working to expand the American Empire in a land where it was not wanted. And whose death, much evidence suggests, was a 2 for 1 political opportunity to advance the nation building agenda in the middle east.

It also tells us not to be mad at a President who all the evidence in the world indicates is a liar, war monger, and manipulator, because made a nice sounding speech in front of the people he surrendered US sovereignty to. He wants to HELP and DIGNIFY Muslims (just ask the Palestineans, Iraqis and Afghanis). We should stand behind his message because it rests on his strong belief in freedom of speech. Because we all know, his administration, who imprisons veterans without habeus corpus for messages posted in a private Facebook card game that they were spying on, has an impeccable record when it comes to freedom and honesty.

Instead Justin tries to convince us that it is a BLOGGER who is inflaming tensions, through the despicable act of calling a fraud a fraud and not feeling bad about it. Oh, and one of his statements could be stretched into being interpreted as calling Obama a Muslim. For shame. Shame on this guy and his followers for expressing doubts about the outcome for all at the point that politics and religion intersect. Especially US politics and Islam. Regardless of the obvious fabrication of the entire 'Innocence' issue (which we could easily call "Lusitania II"), we should support any nice words our president says in response however knowingly disingenuous. And label as blasphemy any reasoned opinion speaking to the obvious contrivance of the whole situation.

WTF man! What black hole did I just stumble into. THIS is Antiwar.com? Reads like the HuffPo to me. A real libertarian may or not like blasphemy, but he would never label free speech as blasphemy. Especially free speech aimed at a disingenuous speech by a disingenuous president, on the topic of a conflict he was clearly part of fabricating. Justin instead drags us down into the he-said/she-said digressive points that aim to trap us into an unresolvable debate, leaving the empire building to continue uninhibited. This is not libertarianism, Reason, or even good reporting. And certainly not the point of view I used to come here for.

The new charter of Anti-war.com:

Lies are truth
Honesty is blasphemy
Distractions are clarity
Meddlers are martyrs

Heard this all before somewhere. No thanks…

nate

this film is an insult and should be condemned and attacked for one reason: it came AFTER we have inflicted so much suffering on these people. we have murdered more than a million innocents, bombed entire cities to rubble, overthrown legitimate governments and replaced them with brutal dictator puppets. if not for these atrocities i doubt they would care about this rediculous film. this is the straw that broke the camel's back and they have the right to be upset

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative, and writes a monthly column for Chronicles. He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000].